In which I spend a bit of time before breakfast browsing through the new paper that arrived in my letterbox... the good, bad and meh

My first impression is that we're going to get on rather well. Good looking, a sparky conversation starter, full of top yarns, and with a serious side. Yes, me and the new compact/tabloid Herald are going to get along just fine.

RNZ's Mediawatch, in its own words, "looks critically at the New Zealand media – television, radio, newspapers and magazines as well as the 'new' electronic media." So why doesn't it criticise the train wreck which Morning Report is rapidly becoming?

I don't agree with those who say bring back Sean Plunket. He's found his metier over at Newstalk ZB, thundering away provoking the talkback callers. And I'm not a snob about talkback either. (Disclosure: I'm an irregular, unpaid, panel guest on Plunket's programme).

It's odd. For an industry based on looking good, the fashion industry seems to know next-to nothing about presentation

When it comes to fashion, calling me a layman would probably be generous. Well, maybe by the standards of most bloggers, I'm not that bad, and I know my Ralph Lauren from my Marc Jacobs, but I don't pay much attention to labels and have never been to Fashion Week. Until yesterday, that is.

Does it make it better, or worse, to confide that the black-and-white habitué and I watch Glee, curled up in the firelight, glass in hand? (The drop in the glass is for me, and my friend sings, purrfectly.)

A stage full of actors at the height of their powers--what could be better? A review of Sean Matthias' production of Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett wrote “Waiting for Godot” after the Second World War, when he had been settled in Paris for twenty years or so. He had become completely bilingual, and the play as first performed at the Théâtre de Babylone in 1953 was almost certainly first conceived and written in French.

Sport has the rare and valuable magic of uncertainty in an otherwise formulaic world, as the All Whites proved again today

And that, my compatriots, is why sporting rights – and sports teams – have been central to Rupert Murdoch's success in building several television empires. A sit-com or drama can engross us, current affairs can change the way we think, but only sport is electric, as we saw in South Africa early this morning.

Sarah Palin's Going Rogue is a campaign book delightfully free of boring old policy and so is a sure fire dog whistle to her adoring base. It reinforces why she should never be President, but who the heck does the Republican Party have as an alternative candidate vaguely as charismatic as Caribou Barbie?

Every now and then we face really tough decisions…I mean capital ‘T’ tough. This week’s was whether or not to spend $34 on Sarah Palin’s God-bothering, petty and vindictive score-settling payback and thereby contribute to ‘the cause’ so to speak. Did I? You betcha!

Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca, which dates from 1933, is the first of a trilogy of late dramatic works, written in blank verse—the others are Yerma (1935) and The House of Bernada Alba (1936)—and performed in the years immediately preceding the Spanish Civil War of which Lorca himself was an ear

I know there are few things more insufferable than hearing about a person's favourite television show, but you really, really, really need to watch The Wire

Since Christmas last year, I have devoted approximate 80 hours of my life to watching (and partially rewatching) all five series of The Wireon DVD. I can think of few better uses I could have made of that time.

2008 was the year that the Age of Trash started to falter. That’s the optimist in me. In March we were treated to an evening of modernist music from France as a part of the International Festival of the Arts.